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THE NATURE AND ORIGIN

NOUN GENDERS IN THE INDO-EUROPEAN
LANGUAGES

PRINCETON LECTURES.

A series of volumes containing the notable lectures de-
livered on the occasion of the Sesquicentennial
celebration of Princeton University.

The French Revolution and English Literature. Six Lectures.

By Prof. EDWARD DOWDEN, Trinity College, Dublin.
Theism. Two Lectures. By Prof. ANDREW SETH, University of

Edinburgh.

The Discharge of Electricity in Gases. Four Lectures. By Prof.
J. J. THOMSON, University of Cambridge.

The Mathematical Theory of the Top. Four Lectures. By Prof.
FELIX KLEIN, University of Gottingen.

The Descent of the Primates. By Prof. A. A. w. HUBRECHT,
University of Utrecht.

The Nature and Origin of the Noun Genders in the Indo-
European Languages. By Prof. KARL BRUGMANN, University
of Leipsic.

The Claims of the Old Testament. Two Lectures. By Prof.
STANLEY LEATHES, D.D., King's College, London.

THE

NATURE AND ORIGIN

OF THE

NOUN GENDERS

IX THE

INDO-EUROPEAN LANGUAGES

A LECTURE DELIVERED ON THE OCCASION OF THE

SESQUICENTENNIAL CELEBRATION OF

PRINCETON UNIVERSITY

BY

KARL BRUGMANN

PROFESSOR OF INDOGEEMANIC PHILOLOGY IN THE
UNIVERSITY OF LEIPSIC

iEranslatclJ bg
EDMUND Y. BOBBINS

PRINCETON UNIVERSITY

NEW YORK

CHARLES SCBTBNEB'S SONS
1897

Copyright, 1897,
BY CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS.

SRnitoersttg
JOHN WILSON AND Sox, CAMBRIDGE, U. S. A.

THE NATURE AND ORIGIN OF THE
NOUN GENDERS IN THE INDO-
EUROPEAN LANGUAGES1

AMONG the many valuable contributions of
William Dwight Whitney to linguistic science
is one especially important and fundamental
principle. It may be stated in these words. In
explaining the prehistoric phenomena of lan-
guage we must assume no other factors than

1 This lecture is based chiefly on the following articles :
Brugmann, Das NominalgescMecht in den indogermanischen
Sprachen, Techmer's Internationale Zeitschrift fiir Sprachwissen-
schajl, IV. p. 100 sqq. ; Zur Frage der Entstehung des gramma-
tischen Geschlechles, Paul und Braune's Beitrdge zur Geschichte
der deutschen Sprache und Literatur, XV. p. 523 sqq. ; Michel,
Zum Wechsel des Nominalgeschlechts im Deutschen, I. (Strass-
burg, 1889), p. 3 sqq.; Zur Beurtheilung von Jacob Grimm's
Ansicht iiber das grammatische Geschlecht, Germania, XXXVI.
p. 121 sqq. Other recent articles on the subject in hand are :
Roethe, Vorrede zum Neudruck der Grimm'schen Grammatik,
Band III. (1889), and Anzeiger fiir deutsches Altertum, XVII.
p. 181 sqq.; Henning, Ueber die Entwicklung des grammati-
schen Geschlechts, Zeitschrift Jur vergleichende Sprachforschung,
XXXIII. p. 402 sqq.

1

33360

2 NATUKE AND OKIGIN OF NOUN GENDERS

those which we are able to observe and estimate
in the historical period of language development.
The factors that produced changes in human
speech five thousand or ten thousand years ago
cannot have been essentially different from those
which are now operating to transform living
languages. On the basis of this principle we
look to-day at a much-discussed problem of
Indo-European philology with views very dif-
ferent from the views held by the founders of
Comparative Philology and their immediate suc-
cessors. I refer to the problem, how the Indo-
European people came to assign gender to
nouns, to distinguish between masculine, femi-
nine, and neuter. This question is of interest
to others besides philologists. What man of
culture who has learned languages such as the
Greek, Latin, or French has not at times won-
dered that objects which have no possible con-
nection with the natural gender of animals
appear constantly in the language as male or
female ? In German, for example, it is d e r
fuss, but die hand ; der geist, but die seele ; in
Latin, hlc hortus, hlc animus, hlc amor, but
ha e c planta, haec anima, haec felicitas ; in
Greek, 6 TrXoOro?, 6 o'/co9, but 17 irevia, f) oucia.
This gender distinction pervades all the older

IN THE INDO-EUROPEAN LANGUAGES 3

Indo-European languages, and must therefore be
regarded as having its origin in the time of the
pro-ethnic Indo-European community. Not only
is the subject itself full of interest, but also the
treatment it has received from the philological
research of our century. The various efforts
made to solve the problem may very aptly illus-
trate an essential difference which exists between
the theories of language development held in the
beginning and middle of this century and those
which prevail to-day, — a difference of method
existing not in comparative linguistics alone, but
also in other fields of philological and historical
research that border on it.

Permit me, then, gentlemen, in this lecture,
first to set before you the views of earlier inves-
tigators on this subject, and then the position
taken by scholars of more recent times.

Let me neglect, for the moment, the so-called
neuter gender, and consider only the distinction
made in nouns between masculine and feminine.
First of all, we must notice that there is a cer-
tain difference in the mode of expressing this
gender distinction in the Indo-European lan-
guages, depending upon whether it is a real
physical sex that is marked, or what is usually
called " formal " or " grammatical " gender, which

4 NATURE AND ORIGIN OF NOUN GENDERS

has to do with concepts possessing no natural, ani-
mal gender. In the case of natural sex there is to
be noticed in all Indo-European languages a two-
fold method of giving it expression. In a number
of the words that denote living beings the name for
the male and the name for the female are formed
from different roots, and the mode of inflection may
be the same for both roots. It is so in the case
of Latin pater and mater, Greek Trarrjp and i^rjr^p.
Here the root of the word distinguishes between
the male and the female. Take, on the other
hand, pairs such as Latin deus and dea, gallus
and gallina, Greek 0eo9, ' god ', and Bed, ' goddess ',
\VKOS, 'wolf, and \vfcaiva, 'she-wolf, English
god and goddess : here the word for the male and
that for the female have the same root material
and a common stem meaning; the inflectional
ending only is different. The grammatical term
for this in German is " motion ". We say the
word is " moviert " in order to mark the femi-
nine sex. In cases of grammatical gender, on
the contrary, there is but one way of making
a distinction, — viz., by inflection. The gender
is made evident only by the inflectional end-
ings, as in Latin animus, anima, Greek oZ«:os,
olxia. This fact shows us that the question as
to how "formal" gender is related to natural

IN THE INDO-EUROPEAN LANGUAGES 5

gender, and how the history of both is to be
investigated, depends entirely and exclusively
on the terminations used to express gender, on
the inflectional suffixes which mark sex.

In only two or three places in the whole
circle of human languages has anything been
found comparable with the formal gender of
the Indo-European languages. In the Semitic-
Hamitic group, especially, the whole language
is pervaded with the idea of gender, but in a
manner that is entirely different from the Indo-
European, externally and internally. There are
scholars who believe in a relationship between
the Semitic-Hamitic family and the Indo-Euro-
pean, but up to the present it has not been
proved ; and the so-called gender of nouns is of
all things least adapted to furnish an argument
for a close genealogical connection. Every-
thing goes to prove that in the matter of gen-
der there was no common development, but that
the genders had a separate history. It is ac-
cordingly correct method if we first investigate
the history of noun genders in each family by
itself.

"VVe have noticed that very few families of
languages mark gender distinctions in their sub-
stantives. Even within the Indo-European, not

6 NATUKE AND ORIGIN OF NOUN GENDEKS

all of the languages have preserved this pecu-
liarity. The English, for example, has but a few
remains. These languages without grammatical
gender are just as well off. The category is
entirely superfluous as regards the main pur-
pose of language, which is to express thought
in the clearest possible manner. Not only su-
perfluous is it, but often even contradictory and
foolish. Sophists like Protagoras held this opin-
ion in antiquity. They ridiculed the gender
distinctions of the Greek, and it is easy to see
why. What real connection with animal gen-
der have all those concepts which our primitive
ancestors characterized as masculine or feminine?
This peculiarity of our language does not usu-
ally cause any practical difficulty to us Indo-
Europeans. We learn it, as we learn all other
peculiarities of the language structure, in early
childhood. It enters in sucum et sanguinem
with the rest. People who are not ludo-Euro-
peans, whose mother tongue has no formal gen-
der, have a very different experience, when in
more mature years they learn a language like
the Greek or Latin. A new world opens itself
to them as they find, for example, Latin animus
called a masculine form, and anima a feminine
form. They marvel at the imagination of the

IN THE INDO-EUROPEAN LANGUAGES 7

Indo-European people, who can look at every-
thing, be it never so abstract and lifeless, as a
concrete object, and as having a corporeal exist-
ence, and who, further, assign a sex in each case,
masculine or feminine.

The grammarians of classical antiquity did
little more with this problem than to become
thoroughly perplexed over it. They contented
themselves with the assertion that man uttering
speech had the right to assign arbitrarily a sex
to any object which had in this particular been
neglected by nature. Not until the philosophic
grammar of the eighteenth century took hold of
the subject, was it treated in a scientific manner.
Herder and Adelung were the first to attempt an
explanation. They insisted that early man in his
simplicity long considered everything he looked
upon as animated, and treated it as a living be-
ing. Grammatical gender is, according to this,
the result of the tendency of primitive man to
individualize and personify. Adelung tried also
to specify why in particular cases this or that
gender was chosen. He says that everything
which was characterized by activity, liveliness,
strength, size, or had anything of the frightful
or terrible in its nature was made masculine.
Those objects, on the contrary, that were felt

8 NATURE AND ORIGIN OF NOUN GENDERS

to be susceptible, fertile, delicate, passive, attrac-
tive, became feminine. Jacob Grimm followed in
this track in the third volume of his German
Grammar. He treats the question of the origin
of noun genders in the Indo-European languages
at great length — some two hundred and fifty
pages — and with all his incomparable skill and
grace in presentation. He believes with Adelung
that grammatical gender had its origin in the
creative imagination of the primitive folk. He
thinks that in that remote pro-ethnic period, at a
time when imagination, not reason, was the pre-
dominant faculty, man individualized and person-
ified every possible lifeless object of the external
world, and assigned to it masculine or feminine
traits. Just as Adelung, Grimm also believes
that whatever gave the impression of the larger,
stronger, more rough, more active, was looked
upon as masculine; on the contrary, whatever
was felt to be smaller, finer, more gentle, soft,
tender, or still, was made feminine. He tries
to prove this by many special cases, and in-
vestigates with poetic spirit the characteristics
of natural objects. One says die hand, haec
manus, r) X€i'P> but der fuss, hlc pes, 6 TTOU?,
because the hand is thought of as the smaller,
daintier, the foot as larger and stronger. All

IN THE INDO-EUROPEAN LANGUAGES 9

the philologists of that day accepted the Ade-
lung-Grimm. hypothesis, and it remained unat-
tacked until long past the middle of the present
century. Wilhelm von Humboldt, Pott, Miklo-
sich, Steinthal, Madvig, and Georg Curtius, for
example, accepted it openly. It is unnecessary
for me to describe at length how this theory
stands in the closest relation to a belief still pre-
vailing in the days of Humboldt and Grimm,
— the belief in a golden age of mankind, where
poetry beautified and simplified the whole life of
primitive man. Nor need I dwell on its par-
ticularly close relation to the then current theory
of the origin and nature of folk-poetry. The ex-
planation of Adelung and Grimm has long out-
lived those views and beliefs out of which it
originated. Yet even Wilhelm Scherer called
the chapter on gender the acme of Grimm's
grammar. And only a few years ago, in 1890,
this theory found a warm and eloquent defender
in the person of Gustav Eoethe, a young Ger-
manic scholar of talent and repute. In the pref-
ace to the new edition of the third volume of
Grimm's grammar, edited by him, this scholar
declares Grimm's view of the origin of gender
to be correct in all essential points. But op-
position had arisen before Roethe's time. A

10 NATURE AND ORIGIN OF NOUN GENDERS

calmer and more critical spirit began to pervade
the science of language from about the year
1870. The more matter-of-fact learning of the
newer linguistics, which supports itself on more
solid foundations, was compelled to question seri-
ously Grimm's hypothesis ; and the decision had
to be rendered that this theory, though idealistic
and poetic, was not strictly scientific. Allow me
to present to you in few words the reasons why
I, as well as some other philologists, have come to
the conclusion that it must be rejected.

Firstly. If we pursue a correct method and
start from what we know empirically ; if we con-
fine ourselves to the facts that lie clearly before
us and can be judged by the materials of our
science, — facts that belong to the present or
recent past of our Indo-European languages, —
then we must assert that masculine and feminine
as grammatical genders say and mean nothing
for the speech of every-day life. And it is only
the ordinary, every-day language that is of im-
portance for this subject. By the grammatical
gender, no idea of anything masculine or femi-
nine, either in literal or figurative sense, is called
up. The masculine and feminine suffixes differ
entirely from other noun suffixes, to which gram-
matical terminology has assigned names on the

IN THE INDO-EUROPEAN LANGUAGES 11

basis of some definite signification. The Germans,
for example, call -chen and -lein diminutive suf-
fixes, and, in fact, every German understands by
sohnchen and sohnlein a small son. So in Eng-
lish 'booklet is a small book, or lambkin is a little
lamb. Nowhere, however, in the Indo-European
languages can it be proved that, for example,
the Indo-European "feminine suffix" -a, as it
appears to-day in Lithuanian and Eussian, e. g.,
Lithuanian ranka, Russian rukd, ' hand ', and as
the Romans had it in anima, casa, fuga, the
Greeks in %o>/oa, 'land', ot/cia, 'house', calls up,
or has called up in any degree, the idea of female
or of any especially feminine characteristic. And
how can any one prove that it was different in
the primitive community, when there must have
been hundreds of substantives in -a- which did
not signify living beings ? Among these, too,
there must have been many that denoted con-
cepts which were in no sense concrete, but
purely abstract, as, for example, *q%oina, l recom-
pense ', from which comes Avestan kalna, Greek
vroivrj, Old Church Slavonic cena. That the formal
gender in our Indo-European languages for thou-
sands of years was not connected with the idea
of the masculine or feminine, is shown by quite
unmistakable evidence. I will call attention

12 NATURE AND ORIGIN OF NOUN GENDERS

here to but one proof. 'EvriKoiva (epicoena) is
the term used by grammarians for those sub-
stantives which, although they denote animals,
have for both physical genders only one lan-
guage expression. The German says der hase,
1 the hare ', der adler, ' the eagle ', and means by
this both the male and female ; again, die mans,
' the mouse ', die eule, ' the owl ', for both the
male and female. In like manner the Greeks said,
for example, 6 /«,{)<?, ' the mouse' , but 97 dXwTn;^,
'the fox'. If there had been any feeling that
the real physical sex was expressed by the gen-
der assigned to the word by the language, they
would have had to understand by der hase al-
ways the male hare only, and by die maus
always the female mouse. Further, when one
said der weibliche hase or die mdnnliche
maus, he would feel that this manner of expres-
sion contained a downright contradiction. But
this is nowhere the case.

A second point which speaks against Grimm's
hypothesis is the following. The Indo-Europeans,
from the very fact of being a primitive people
without culture, are asserted to have had this
remarkable impulse to personify and sexualize.
This tendency accordingly made them take a
fanciful view of the whole universe and think

IN THE INDO-EUROPEAN LANGUAGES 13

of the great majority of noun concepts as male
or female. Now there are peoples to-day who
still represent about the same degree of culture
which we must suppose our ancestors possessed
at the time when they began to differentiate
nouns into masculine and feminine. Should we
not find among these peoples some parallel to
this mental attitude ? Yet nothing has come to
light at all comparable with the Indo-European
sexualizing — in the sense in which it is presup-
posed by Grimm's hypothesis ; this too, though
some of these uncultured peoples look at every-
thing in a very concrete fashion, and possess a
very lively imagination, which displays itself in
their language as well as in many other direc-
tions. It is not a valid objection to say here that
the structure of the languages of these savage
peoples is essentially different from that of the
Indo-European languages, and also from that of
the Semitic-Hamitic languages. In a psychologi-
cal sense, the grammatical categories of our in-
flectional languages are to be found in every
language of the earth ; the mode of expression
alone is different. Had the Indo-European gen-
der suffixes originally meant male and female,
or manlike and womanlike, the other languages
would have been by no means without analogies

14 NATURE AND ORIGIN OF NOUN GENDERS

in their manner and means of expressing gender
distinctions.

In the third place, Grimm's theory is in itself
psychologically improbable. It presupposes that
noun concepts were always (1) individualized
and thought of as a separate object, (2) conceived
of as a living being, and (3) sexualized as male
or female. Now, for primitive man the external
world was mostly matter, material, just as it is
for us to-day, but to him even more so perhaps
than to us. Material and general concepts, such
as gold, mud, water, fog, flesh, grain, were cer-
tainly not as a rule conceived of and named in
the pro-ethnic period as individuals; yet they
show in large part, since primitive times, either
masculine or feminine gender. How is it that
such substantive concepts came to be conceived
of as male or female, if they were not even con-
sidered as an individual ? Further than this,
that which is individualized is not necessarily
thought of as animated and personal. Even if
we imagine to ourselves the fancy of the Indo-
Europeari as lively and active, creating for itself
many mythical images, yet however active it
may have been, it could have drawn only a small
circle of objects into its scope. It is certainly
true that our primitive ancestors thought more

IN THE INDO-EUROPEAN LANGUAGES 15

in the concrete than we moderns. But " con-
crete thinking" does not mean to consider as
man or beast something which is not concrete,
but which is in its very essence abstract. Ani-
malization and personification, like poetry, have
their origin in fantastic, exalted feeling, and there
never has been a time when man stood continu-
ally on such a poetic height. Every-day life is
hard and prosaic in modern times, and still more
stern and prosaic was it in those primitive days
to which Grimm's theory carries us back. Aside
from this, the creative imagination of man pro-
duces not only anthropomorphic and theriomor-
phic beings, but also inanimate, material meta-
phors. The cloud floating across the .heavens,
for example, is looked upon in mythology as an
animate being, as a giant, but is also considered
as a garment of air, a cloak, or something simi-
lar. Why should one think that primitive man
overloaded language with personal metaphors
instead of impersonal ? And, thirdly, each par-
ticular thing, even if it is animalized, is not
necessarily at the same time sexualized. Very
often our imagination discovers in a lifeless ob-
ject attributes of a person, and for the moment,
or for a longer time, personifies this object, and
forms out of it a living being. But it is not

16 NATUKE AND ORIGIN OF NOUN GENDERS

necessary that all the characteristics of a living
being be present in our consciousness, and that
in each case we think of the objects accordingly
as male or female. Language itself shows us,
with its epicene nouns already mentioned, with
its words like Greek \VKOS, Latin lupus, German
wolf, used alike for male or female, that often
enough no notice is taken of distinction of sex.

One fact stands out • clearly as the conclusion
to all this : Grimm's theory ascribes to the Indo-
Europeans a mental condition which we cannot
harmonize with what we actually know of the
mental life of man and of races. It may find a
parallel, at best, in certain pathological states of
the human intellect. But, you may ask, does
not one thing argue very strongly in favor of
Grimm's theory, — the fact, namely, that in the
mythology and poetry of the Indo-European
people, where lifeless concepts are personified,
the sex of the mythological personage corre-
sponds regularly to the grammatical gender of
the words concerned? The Greeks thought of
VTTVOS, 'Sleep', and Odvaros, 'Death', as male
deities, not as female, and yala, ' Earth ', and drrj,
' Folly ', as goddesses, not as gods. In the old
Germanic mythology der Tag (New High Ger-
man d e r tag) appears only as a god, die Nacht

IN THE INDO-EUROPEAN LANGUAGES 17

(New High German die nachf) only as a god-
dess. Among the Hindoos agni, the ' Fire ', only
as a god, usas, the 'Dawn', only as a goddess.
And so in other cases. But this sort of per-
sonification in no way substantiates the theory
that the origin of grammatical gender is to be
sought in the particularly active imagination of
the primitive Indo-European people. Grimm's
theory deceived our mythologists and led them
to a mistaken view, — a view that meets us in
several places in the otherwise instructive book
of H. Usener on the " Gbtternamen." In all the
cases that come into consideration here the gram-
matical gender of the word, so far as we can
judge, is the earlier. The imagination used this
gender and allowed itself to be led by it. The
procedure is the same whether it is uncultivated
primitive man creating a myth unconsciously, or
the poet doing it with conscious effort. When
either personified a lifeless concept into a living
being, it was the grammatical form of the noun
that, through the psychological impulse of ana-
logy, an impulse that was very strong, and was,
indeed, almost compulsory, decided the definite
direction of the gender, — whether it should be
masculine or feminine. Our thoughts and con-
ceptions cling close to the language form. We

2

18 NATURE AND ORIGIN OF NOUN GENDERS

do not control and lead language, but language
rules and directs us. The Greek virvos, for ex-
ample, was from Indo-European time a simple
appellative, just as the corresponding words in
the other Indo-European languages, Latin somnus,
Sanskrit svdpnas, Lithuanian sapnas, etc. Be-
cause vTrvof had the same inflectional form as the
numerous masculine nouns in -09, like d8e\<£o?,
' brother ', tfeo'?, ' god ', and was, in consequence,
most closely associated in the consciousness with
these, the Greeks made Sleep a god and not a
goddess. So far as the concept itself was con-
cerned, there was nothing to prevent Sleep from
being personified as a female. "Tyfeia, ' Health ',
became a female deity, because the word in its
inflectional form corresponded to the numerous
words denoting females, — such as <ypaia, ' old
woman ', irorvia, ' mistress '. There is nothing in
the nature of health that compelled it to be of
either gender as opposed to the other. For this
reason the separate Indo-European peoples have
often assigned different genders to the same dei-
ties ; the cause being that the appellative itself
was of different genders in the different lan-
guages. To the Greeks and Eomans e/aw? and
amor was a boy or youth ; for both these words
were masculine when used as appellatives. To

IN THE INDO-EUROPEAN LANGUAGES 19

the Germans, on the contrary, die Minne, die
Liebe was a goddess, since the appellative was
feminine. To the same cause are due the differ-
ent conceptions of the sun and moon, as male or
female, among the different peoples ; it is always
according to the nature of the appellative. In
the pro-ethnic period the state of affairs must
have been similar. Therefore, there is nothing
to hinder the assumption that pro-ethnic *dyeus,
the dyaus of the ancient Hindoos, the Zeik of
the Greeks, the Jupiter (Juppiier) of the Eomans,
became a male deity, and not a female, because the
name, originally meaning ' heaven ' and ' bright
day ', was a masculine appellative. In every case
where the mythological name is at the same time
retained in its original appellative signification,
we have a similar right to assume that only the
grammatical gender was present at first, and that
this decided the choice of sex for the personified
conception. Even to-day, in the art of the Ger-
mans and other peoples who still have the gram-
matical gender, this gender receives recognition.
I know of numerous pictures and statues which
represent die elektricitdt as a person, and all per-
sonify the force as a female. Yet occasionally
the grammatical gender is overlooked. At an
art exhibition in one of the larger German cities

20 NATUEE AND ORIGIN OF NOUN GENDEKS

about fifteen years ago, Hunger was to be seen
represented in marble as a ragged, hollow-eyed
old vyoman. At the base of the statue was the
inscription Der Hunger. A critic claimed, in a
newspaper article, that this was incorrect. Der
Hunger should be made a man. The artist had
perhaps followed a French prototype, whose
creator had chosen a woman because of la faim.
The sculptor got rid of the inaccuracy, but not
by carving a new statue and making it a man ;
he simply wrote beneath his figure the words, —
Die Hungersnot.

It holds good, then, for the historical period of
the Indo-European languages, that in personify-
ing lifeless things, the sex is usually determined
by the grammatical gender; and no one can
prove that in such cases the anthropomorphic
conception is older than the word with which
our ancestors named the thing. This fact, in
my opinion, destroys the foundation of Grimm's
hypothesis. Jacob Grimm, with poetic fancy,
sought to recall to us a beautiful idyl of the
past. Sentimentalists may lament the excessive
sobriety and arid intellectuality of modern gram-
marians, which dares in its lack of appreciation
to disturb this idyl. I, for my part, cannot but
feel that, in declaring the beautiful idyl to be a

IN THE INDO-EUROPEAN LANGUAGES 21

mere poetic glorification of the imaginative facul-
ties of our ancestors, and in explaining gram-
matical gender as a fiction, we are not robbing
them of anything we could wish them to have
possessed.

You will ask, What is the truth about gram-
matical gender ? How came the Indo-Europeans
to possess it, if Grimm is in the wrong ? I must
consider here for a moment the so-called neu-
ter, which has thus far been left out of the
discussion. You know that the neuters in all
Indo-European languages, so far as their stem
formation is concerned, belong with the mascu-
lines. Latin jugum, genitive jugi, etc., has the
same o-suffix that appears in words like dolus,
pypulus ; mare, maris, etc., has the same i-suffix
as avis, turris. The difference between the neu-
ters and the other genders consists only in the
different case-forms used for nominatives and
accusatives. The masculine nominative singular
has an -s, the neuter an -m as case-sign. This is
connected with a fact that I cannot here dwell
upon at greater length, viz., that while the forms
with -s originally served as the subject of the
sentence (which could also be represented by
the -m form), these -s forms had, besides this, a
more specific meaning. The termination -a in

22 NATURE AND ORIGIN OF NOUN GENDERS

Latin plural juga was a mark of distinction for a
collective signification of the noun stem. These
are relationships of a very different character from
the antithesis of masculine and feminine, which
has up to this point received our attention. One
cannot, to be sure, neglect entirely the neuter in
studying the origin of the masculine and femi-
nine, yet the development of the neuter is an-
other question, and one subordinate to that which
regards the origin of the other two genders. We
can therefore omit it from this discussion.

The masculine and feminine gender is ex-
pressed by means of the so-called stem suffixes,
as, for example, the contrast ace. sg. ani-mu-m
and ani-ma-m shows. All suffixes which appear
from primitive times in both masculines and
feminines are here irrelevant to the question ;
such are -i-, -u-, -men-, -ter-, -es-. It is perfectly
plain that these never had a specifically mascu-
line or a specifically feminine significance, and
had consequently nothing whatever to do with
this distinction. Further it must be noticed,
that the o-suffix in the so-called masculines, such
as Latin animus, deus, Greek aVe/^o?, 0eo'<?, cannot
originally have denoted a physical sex. This is
shown by the universally recognized fact that
those substantives in -o-s which denote men or

IN THE INDO-EUROPEAN LANGUAGES 23

beasts were used primitively as a general term
for the animal without regard to sex distinction.
Note, for example, the Indo-European word
*ek~o-s = Latin equos, Greek ITTTTO?, Sanskrit asvas.
It signified originally horse in general, and did
not have any special meaning like stallion. Not
until there appeared by the side of such substan-
tives in -o-s, forms with the suffix -a- or with the
suffix -ie-, -i- to denote the female, did the use of
the o-stems suffer any limitation. It was then
that the o-stem first came to be employed to
signify specifically a male being. In this way
Latin equos, by contrast with equa, ' mare ', ac-
quired the special meaning ' stallion '. So San-
skrit vrkas, in contrast with vrki, ' she-wolf ', was
used to mean the male wolf. In a word, the
whole problem that is at present claiming our
attention, depends for its settlement on one ques-
tion. What was the original function of the -a-
in words like Latin anima, equa, Greek %&>/oa,
' land ', Oea, ' goddess ', Sanskrit bhida, ' split ' ?
And what was the original function of the -ie-, -l-
in words like Latin acies, Greek 7\<wcrcra, ' tongue',
TTorvia, ' mistress ', Sanskrit sdcl, ' strength ', vrki,
' she-wolf ' ?

According to the older theory, as we have
seen, these suffixes -a-, -ie-(-l-) originally carried

24 NATURE AND ORIGIN OF NOUN GENDERS

the notion of female, or some special female
characteristic. "We are brought to a different
decision. They did not, in all probability, have
that original signification. It is a misuse of the
grammatical terminology to call these two suf-
fixes, in general, and in every case where they
appear in the Indo-European languages, by the
name " feminine suffixes." They are feminine
only in some cases, and, indeed, in only a com-
paratively small proportion of the whole number,
as in words like Greek 9ea and Trdrvia, are they
really what we ordinarily call them. Similar
misuse and similar inaccuracy and inadequacy of
the scientific terminology is to be found in many
other cases. To mention but a single example :
the suffix -to- in the Latin substantive formations
such as datus, amatus,flmtus, is called the suffix of
the perfect " passive " participle. Yet the Latin
has numerous -to- participles with signification
that is not passive ; for example, ratus, secutvs.
These participles, as can readily be proved, never
had, in Latin nor in the pro-ethnic Italic lan-
guage nor in the Indo-European, passive mean-
ing. The participial suffix -to- was originally
used to form verbal adjectives which predi-
cated an action as a distinguishing character-
istic or peculiarity; for example, vSmp pvrov is

IN THE INDO-EUROPEAN LANGUAGES 25

water which has the characteristic that it flows,
and in which the flowing is perceptible. This is
a function that has nothing whatever to do with
the distinction between active and passive. Rec-
ognizing this fact, we can understand how the
suffix came to be used in all the older Indo-
European languages in active as well as in passive
forms. He who comprehends all Latin -to- parti-
ciples under the name perfect " passive " parti-
ciples makes a false use of this term. This
misuse is wide-spread, and unfortunately so in
its results, for it gave rise to the belief that the
fundamental meaning of -to- was a passive one.
In a very similar manner the circumstance that
-a- and -ie- denote the female animal in some of
the substantives formed with them, has had the
result that we speak of the " feminine " suffix in
words like Latin anima, acies. In both cases
there is an unjustifiable generalization of a term.
If one examines all the words of the Indo-
European languages which are formed with the
suffixes -a-, -ie-(-^-), he comes readily to the view
that the original function of these suffixes was to
form abstracts and collectives. This fundamental
meaning would, in many cases, be preserved un-
changed in all Indo-European languages. It re-
mains in Latin fuga, ' flight ', juventa, ' youth ',

26 NATURE AND ORIGIN OF NOUN GENDERS

acies, ' sharpness ', materies, ' matter ', ' building
material '. The view can be well defended that
our suffixes started with this original function,
and acquired afterwards, though still of course in
the period of the Indo-European community, the
power to denote living beings of the female sex.
Allow me to establish this position as briefly as
possible. It is a peculiarity of the languages of
the Indo-European family, modern as well as
ancient, that names with abstract signification
are often employed for concrete concepts. Terms
expressing a quality come to be used to denote the
individual person or thing which possesses that
quality ; further, terms of collective signification
are employed to designate individuals. A good
example is found in those words which mean
youth and youthfulness. In several languages,
words such as these have come to be used as
implying a single youthful person. The English
word youth is a case. Beauty in English, and
the corresponding die schonheit in German, are
both used to designate beautiful people, though
chiefly, of course, those who belong /car' e^o^v,
to the " fair sex." The German employs the ab-
stracts bedienung, ' service ', aufwartung, ' attend-
ance ', for individuals who serve and attend. The
German frauenzimmer in the older New High

IN THE INDO-EUROPEAN LANGUAGES 27

German meant those women who lived together
in the part of the house reserved for females, viz.,
a number of women. Since the beginning of the
eighteenth century, and up to the present time
also, it means only a single woman. In this way,
or in a similar way, certain abstracts and collec-
tives in -a- and -ie- may, in the Indo-European
period, have become names for females. The
common Indo-European word for woman, pro-
ethnic *g~end (Greek yvvij, Gothic qino, Old
Church Slavonic zena), can originally have had
the meaning ' bearing ', ' parturition ', and the tran-
sition to the signification ' the animal that bears '
would have been the same as the transition of be-
dienung, ' service', to bedienendes wesen, bedienende
person, 'one who serves', English colloquial 'help'.
Pro-ethnic *ek^d, Latin equa, can have meant
originally ' a drove of horses ', ' a stud '. The way
it comes to mean ' mare ' is shown by the Ger-
man word huhn; this meant at first the cocks and
the hens together, then the flock of female fowl,
and finally the individual female fowl. If the
suffixes -a- and -4e- implanted themselves in this
manner in a number of words of feminine signi-
fication, the idea of feminine sex could attach
itself to the suffixes, and they could acquire this
additional shade of meaning. The final step was

28 NATURE AND ORIGIN OF NOUN GENDERS

for the suffixes to become " productive " with this
meaning inherent in them ; and that, too, has
sure parallels in both the newer and older Indo-
European languages.

I quote two examples, — one from the German
and one from the Greek. The suffix -iska-, used
by Germans to form adjectives, equivalent to
English -ish, New High German -isch, had origi-
nally a very general adjective signification. We
have it in Gothic mannisJcs, 'manly', in English
thievish, in New High German himmlisch, ' heav-
enly '. It appears with especial frequency in deri-
vations from the names of persons and peoples,
e. g., New High German kriegerisch, romisch, eng-
lisch. In a number of these adjectives it hap-
pens that the noun forming the base of the
adjective is the name of a person whose rank
or occupation is considered blameworthy or con-
temptible ; such as New High German diebisch,
from dieb, ' thief ', rduberisch from rduber, ' rob-
ber ', ndrrisch from narr, ' fool '. In this way
the element -isch has itself come to share in the
idea of the contemptible, and particularly in this
direction has become " productive " in New High
German. New words have been coined with the
suffix -isch to express the sense of contempt.
Abgottiscli, 'idolatrous', teuflisch, 'devilish', selbst-

IN THE INDO-EUROPEAN LANGUAGES 29

isck, 'selfish', linkisch, ' awkward', hdmisch, 'knav-
ish ', are examples. The suffix has not, however,
in all cases acquired the additional ethical sig-
nificance. In himmlisch, 'heavenly', stddtisch,
'urban', kriegerisch, 'warlike', and many other
adjectives it has retained its ancient meaning,
which implied no notion either of contempt or
esteem. Just as these last-mentioned words
have remained entirely uninfluenced by the idea
of contempt, so many of the substantives formed
with -a- and -ie- contain nothing of the idea of
feminine sex : such are Latin fuga, anima, Greek
<f>wyri, xcopa, etc. The parallelism goes still fur-
ther. If the Romans, when they personified luna
or abundantia, thought of them as feminine, and
made them female deities because they associated
them with words for female beings like dea, fem-
ina, lupa, the process is analogous to the treat-
ment of kindisch, 'childish', weibisch, 'womanish'.
These last did not yet have in Luther's time any
touch of disparagement in their meaning, but de-
noted what is to-day expressed by kindlicli, ' child-
like ', and weiblich, ' womanly '. They received the
secondary touch of disparagement in consequence
of the influence of adjectives like diebisch, ndr-
riscJi, teuflisch, and the like. The further ex-
ample is the history of the primitive suffix -bho-

30 NATURE AND ORIGIN OF NOUN GENDERS

in Greek. This suffix, whose original meaning
is not clear, is found in Greek in names of
animals, like e\a(/>o9, ' stag ', acr/eaA,a</>o9, ' owl ',
but also in words of entirely different signifi-
cation, as tf/>oYa</>o9, ' temple ', /eo'Xa</>o9, ' cuff on
the ears ', </>\^va(£o9, ' gossip ', ' chatter '. The
Greek inherited two or three names for animals
which had this termination from the time of the
Indo-European community. They became models
in the Greek language, and a large number of
animals received names in -a<£o9, -a(f>r], formed on
the analogy of these few. On the signification
of the words like /epo'ra(/>o9, which lay outside of
this category, the spread of -a<£o9 in the zoologi-
cal terminology had no influence.

There are still, gentlemen, many other ques-
tions which I should answer, and these have no
doubt occurred to you in the course of my dis-
cussion. Above all, there is the question as to
how the Indo-European people came to express
distinctions of gender in the forms of the ad-
jectives, as in magnus,-a,-um. I cannot attempt
to-day to enter upon these difficult and complex
problems. The solution of the main problem
does not depend upon them. It is sufficient for
me to have shown that it is possible to take a
historical view of the noun genders masculine

IN THE INDO-EUROPEAN LANGUAGES 31

and feminine without ascribing to our Indo-
European ancestors a mental state that has no
analogy in those periods that are familiar to us
from historical tradition. The solution which I
have presented to you can unfortunately never
be absolutely proved ; for we have to do with a
period in the history of language in which we
cannot go a step further than simple hypothesis.
It can be said, however, of our explanation, and
it is indeed its strongest claim over the theory
of Adelung and Grimm, that it keeps within the
limits of phenomena which are among the best
substantiated in the history of the Indo-European
language family, and which may be observed in
the very latest phases of its development.

And so I return, in my conclusion, to that
statement with which I began. I said that the
different attempts which have been made to
explain the problem of grammatical gender in
the Indo-European speech illustrate well the
difference between the methods of investigation
employed by the older generation of linguistic
students, and those of the generation at work in
the present. In the time of Grimm and Bopp
and their immediate successors, it was the cus-
tom to devote attention preferably to the prehis-
toric times, and to explain the peculiarities of

32 NATURE AND ORIGIN OF NOUN GENDERS

the primitive language largely on subjective theo-
ries. Forces and tendencies were ascribed to the
primitive tongue and to the prehistoric period
which have no analogy in historical times, and
pro-ethnic antiquity was thus surrounded with
a fantastic and mystical glamour. The later
investigation regards more the present. It con-
siders it of the chief importance to understand
that which is now before us, and that which be-
longs to the immediate past, investigating its
growth and development. Its principle is this :
to take as the starting-point what is known by
experience, and to apply this to the unknown of
the past, to the conditions of prehistoric times ;
to use it not without discretion, but yet as the
main criterion for recognizing ancient conditions.
In this way we may hope to throw some light even
upon those most remote periods in the history of
our language. Your own countryman Whitney
was one of the first to insist on these principles
of investigation. It is my hope that this spirit
of genuine historical induction, which has pre-
vailed but a single score of years in linguistic
science, may never again be lost to Indo-Euro-
pean philology.

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